"That letter doesn't affect the validity of the will. Any one will tell you that."
"And then?" I exclaimed. "Granting that it is valid, Noël Dorgeroux mentions nobody in it except myself for the Lodge and his god-daughter for the Yard. The only one who benefits, except myself, is Bérangère."
"Quite so, quite so," replied the man, without changing countenance. "But nobody knows what has become of Bérangère Massignac. Suppose that she were dead . . ."
I grew indignant:
"She's not dead! It's quite impossible that she should be dead!"
"Very well," he said, calmly. "Then suppose that she's alive, that she's been kidnapped or that she's in hiding. In any event, one fact is certain, which is that she is under twenty, consequently she's a minor and consequently she cannot administer her own property. From the legal point of view she exists only in the person of her natural representative, her guardian, who in this case happens to be her father."
"And her father?" I asked, anxiously.
"Is myself."
He put on his hat, took it off again with a bow and said:
"Théodore Massignac, forty-two years of age, a native of Toulouse, a commercial traveller in wines."